Fri Post #2: "It's just how it is!"

Interesting housing story over on CTV.  You can click here to see the clip.

The segment is titled 'Generation Squeezed' and it profiles a young family who question whether they will ever be able to own a home in Vancouver.

28 year old Derek Atkinson is interviewed.

Derek and his wife have a combined income that would allow them to buy a $500,000 home but a minimum 5% down would require a downpayment of $25,000.

The problem is, saving up $25,000 will take as much as six years... and that's a stumbling block.

But the Atkinsons are privileged. CTV tells us the average family only makes $67,000 per year, enough to qualify for just a $300,000 mortgage... and in Vancouver $300,000  doesn't go very far.

It prompts CTV to ask, "do young Vancouver couples have a right to home ownership in the City they grew up in?"

Which brings us to Tom Davidoff from the UBC Sauder School of Business.

Davidoff tells us;

"There's not going to be any free lunch in the Vancouver.  There's not going to be any free lunch to own a home in the most Beautiful Place on Earth... so I think people need to be prepared they are just going to have to accept that reality."

CTV then drops another great stat. Average household incomes are no higher today than they were in the 1970s. And with those stalled incomes they need to pay for those housing prices which have gone up 76% across the country and almost 150% right here in BC.

CTV concludes that it all adds up to a growing sense of frustration and hopelessness for an entire generation of Canadians like the Atkinson's.

The story closes as Atkinson says;

"it is just a big challenge... you know... right now you just get resigned to it... it's just... how it is."

It's just how it is... that's the message.

This... after a week long orgy of doom and gloom about real estate and the potential for a collapse in housing prices?

Interesting.

More on this later on the weekend.

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